New temperature records highlight global warming's continued rise

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Photos:11 ways climate change affects the world

Melting polar ice caps – The consequences of climate change go far beyond warming temperatures, which scientists say are melting the polar ice caps and raising sea levels. Click through the gallery for a look at 10 other key effects of climate change, some of which may surprise you.

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Photos:11 ways climate change affects the world

Drought – In the coming decades climate change will unleash megadroughts lasting 10 years or more, according to a new report by scholars at Cornell University, the University of Arizona and the U.S. Geological Survey. We're seeing hints of this already in many arid parts of the world and even in California, which has been rationing water amid record drought. In this 2012 photo, a man places his hand on parched soil in the Greater Upper Nile region of northeastern South Sudan.

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Photos:11 ways climate change affects the world

Wildfires – There's not a direct link between climate change and wildfires, exactly. But many scientists believe the increase in wildfires in the Western United States is partly the result of tinder-dry forests parched by warming temperatures. This photo shows a wildfire as it approaches the shore of Bass Lake, California, in mid-September.

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Photos:11 ways climate change affects the world

Coral reefs – Scientists say the oceans' temperatures have risen by more than 1 degree Fahrenheit over the last century. It doesn't sound like much, but it's been enough to affect the fragile ecosystems of coral reefs, which have been bleaching and dying off in recent decades. This photo shows dead coral off the coast of St. Martin's Island in Bangladesh.

Pollen allergies – Are you sneezing more often these days? Climate change may be to blame for that, too. Recent studies show that rising temperatures and carbon dioxide levels promote the growth of weedy plant species that produce allergenic pollen. The worst place in the United States for spring allergies in 2014, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America? Louisville, Kentucky.

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Photos:11 ways climate change affects the world

Deforestation – Climate change has not been kind to the world'sforests. Invasive species such as the bark beetle, which thrive in warmer temperatures, have attacked trees across the North American west, from Mexico to the Yukon. University of Colorado researchers have found that some populations of mountain pine beetles now produce two generations per year, dramatically boosting the bugs' threat to lodgepole and ponderosa pines. In this 2009 photo, dead spruces of the Yukon's Alsek River valley attest to the devastation wrought by the beetles.

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Photos:11 ways climate change affects the world

Mountain glaciers – The snows capping majestic Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest peak, once inspired Ernest Hemingway. Now they're in danger of melting away altogether. Studies suggest that if the mountain's snowcap continues to evaporate at its current rate, it could be gone in 15 years. Here, a Kilimanjaro glacier is viewed from Uhuru Peak in December 2010.

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Photos:11 ways climate change affects the world

Endangered species – Polar bears may be the poster child for climate change's effect on animals. But scientists say climate change is wreaking havoc on many other species -- including birds and reptiles -- that are sensitive to fluctuations in temperatures. One, this golden toad of Costa Rica and other Central American countries, has already gone extinct.

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Photos:11 ways climate change affects the world

Animal migration – It's not your imagination: Some animals -- mostly birds -- are migrating earlier and earlier every year because of warming global temperatures. Scholars from the University of East Anglia found that Icelandic black-tailed godwits have advanced their migration by two weeks over the past two decades. Researchers also have found that many species are migrating to higher elevations as temperatures climb.

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Photos:11 ways climate change affects the world

Extreme weather – The planet could see as many as 20 more hurricanes and tropical storms each year by the end of the century because of climate change, according to a 2013 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This image shows Superstorm Sandy bearing down on the New Jersey coast in 2012.

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Story highlights

March 2015 was the warmest March globally in 136 years, at least

Last year was the warmest year on record

(CNN)New climate change records have come along to remind us that Earth's thermostat is steadily pushing upward.

More exactly, there are two global high temperature records and a smattering of climate change low points.

Severe weather: Flood, fire and drought – Climate change is here and will only worsen. Get used to more flooding, wildfires and drought, depending on where you live. That's the take-home message of a White House report released in May that is part of President Barack Obama's second-term effort to prepare the nation for rising sea levels and increasingly erratic weather. Here, a flooded parking lot at the Laurel Park horse racing track is seen Thursday, May 1, in Laurel, Maryland. Click through to see more examples of severe weather:

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Photos:Severe weather changes

Severe weather: Flood, fire and drought – More than 300 experts helped produce the report over several years, updating a previous assessment published in 2009. A Democratic operative who now counsels the President called the report "actionable science" for policymakers and the public to use in forging a way forward. In this image, cars are seen in the aftermath of an embankment collapse in Baltimore as a massive storm system pounded the mid-Atlantic on April 30.

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Photos:Severe weather changes

Severe weather: Flood, fire and drought – The report breaks the country down by region and identifies specific threats should climate change continue. Major concerns cited by scientists involved in creating the report include rising sea levels along America's coasts, drought in the Southwest and prolonged fire seasons. In this image from January 16, a wildfire burns in the hills just north of the San Gabriel Valley community of Glendora, California.

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Photos:Severe weather changes

Severe weather: Flood, fire and drought – The Great Plains could experience heavier droughts and heat waves with increasing frequency, while more wildfires in the West could threaten agriculture and residential communities, the report notes. In this image, dry and cracked earth is visible on what used to be the bottom of Folsom Lake on March 20, in El Dorado Hills, California.

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Photos:Severe weather changes

Severe weather: Flood, fire and drought – Republican critics immediately pounced on new report as a political tool for Obama to try to impose a regulatory agenda that would hurt the economy. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky mocked what he described as the hypocritical stance of "liberal elites" who demand strong action on climate change while failing to reduce their own carbon footprint. He called the debate "cynical" because Obama knew that "much of the pain of imposing such regulations would be borne by our own middle class." Here in March, an avocado grove near Valley Center, California, is left to wither because of the rising cost of water.

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Photos:Severe weather changes

Severe weather: Flood, fire and drought – Recent polling indicates most Americans believe human activities cause climate change but also shows the issue is less important to the public than the economy and other topics. A Gallup poll in March found that 34% of respondents think climate change, called global warming in the poll, posed a "serious threat" to their way of life, compared with 64% who responded "no." At the same time, more than 60% of respondents believed global warming was happening or would happen in their lifetime. Here, a pedestrian crosses Douglas Avenue on a bike during a snowstorm on February 4, in Wichita, Kansas.

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Photos:Severe weather changes

Severe weather: Flood, fire and drought – The report predicts sea levels will rise at least a foot by the end of the century and perhaps as much as 4 feet, depending on how much of the Greenland and Antarctic ice shelf melts. Such an outcome could be catastrophic for millions of people living along the ocean, submerging tropical islands and encroaching on coastal areas. In this image, dated October 29, 2012, streets are flooded under the Manhattan Bridge in the Dumbo section of Brooklyn, New York, as Superstorm Sandy slammed the Northeast coast.

In the latter two thirds of that time, warming and the effects on climate have been epochal, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "Since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia."

That new March record

March 2015 edged past the last record high March, which was in 2010, rising by0.09 degrees Fahrenheit (0.05 C). Average global land and water temperatures for the first quarter of this year beat the last record first quarter, 2002, by the same margin.

March 2015 is the hottest March globally on record

Yet another broken record this March was more obvious to the eye. The expanse of Arctic sea ice shrunk to an absolute low for any March on record.

"The average Arctic sea ice extent for March was 430,000 square miles (7.2 percent) below the 1981--2010 average. This was the smallest March extent since records began in 1979," NOAA said.

Small gains, large net loss

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On the other end of the globe -- in the Antarctic -- sea ice has been on the gain, and this year, it hit a record March high.

But globally, the overall result is a big net loss. "The upward trend in the Antarctic ... is only about a third of the magnitude of the rapid loss of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean," according to NASA.

Natural ice continues disappearing elsewhere.

Californians in particular have noticed the lack of snow on their mountain peaks, a major source of their dwindling water supply. The warming trend has reduced snow coverage throughout the Northern hemisphere, especially reducing the amount of coverage in spring.

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NASA: Much more to come

But all this is nothing compared to what lies ahead, NASA says. What it expects for the not-so-distant future is unprecedented in contemporary weather records, unprecedented in at least the past 1,000 years.

If carbon emissions continue on course, further temperature rises should bring decades-long megadroughts to the western half of the United States in this century.

Wait. That would be yet another record.

This March saw the highest level of greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere since record keeping began. Not the highest level for any March but the highest level ever at 400 parts per million, NOAA says. Considering the rising carbon dioxide trend, NASA has run 17 climate models on supercomputers with data spanning the past 1,000 years.